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It is difficult to speak about Europe today without reference to its constitutive regions-supra-national geographical designations such as "Scandinavia," "Eastern Europe," and "the Balkans." Such formulations are so ubiquitous that they are frequently treated as empirical realities rather than a series of shifting, overlapping, and historically constructed concepts. This volume is the first to provide a synthetic account of these concepts and the historical and intellectual contexts in which they emerged. Bringing together prominent international scholars from across multiple disciplines, it systematically and comprehensively explores how such "meso-regions" have been conceptualized throughout modern European history.
List of contents
List of Tables and Figures
Introduction Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi PART I: EUROPEAN MESO-REGIONS Chapter 1. Western Europe
Stefan Berger Chapter 2. Scandinavia /
Norden Bo Stråth and Marja Jalava Chapter 3. The Baltic
Pärtel Piirimäe Chapter 4. The Mediterranean
Vaso Seirinidou Chapter 5. Southern Europe
Guido Franzinetti Chapter 6. Iberia
Xosé-M.Núñez Seixas Chapter 7. Balkans / Southeastern Europe
Diana Mishkova Chapter 8. Central Europe
Balázs Trencsényi Chapter 9. Eastern Europe
Frithjof Benjamin Schenk Chapter 10. Eurasia
Mark Bassin PART II: DISCIPLINARY TRADITIONS OF REGIONALIZATION Chapter 11. European History
Stefan Troebst Chapter 12. Political Geography and Geopolitics
Virginie Mamadouh and Martin Müller Chapter 13. Economics
Georgi Ganev Chapter 14. Historical Demography
Attila Melegh Chapter 15. Linguistics
Uwe Hinrichs Chapter 16. Literary History
Alex Drace-Francis Chapter 17. Art History
Eric Storm Index
About the author
Diana Mishkova has been the Director, since 2000, of the Center for Advanced Study Sofia. She has published extensively on comparative Balkan history, intellectual history, and historiography. She is the author of Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making (2018), Domestication of Freedom: Modernity and Legitimacy in Serbia and Romania in the Nineteenth Century (2001), and the editor of seven scholarly collections.
Balázs Trencsényi is Professor in the History Department of Central European University, Budapest. His main field of interest is the history of political thought in East Central Europe. He is the author of The Politics of ‘National Character’: A Study in Interwar East European Thought (2012), and co-author of A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Vol. I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (2016).
Summary
It is difficult to speak about Europe today without reference to its constitutive regions—supra-national geographical designations such as “Scandinavia,” “Eastern Europe,” and “the Balkans.” Such formulations are so ubiquitous that they are frequently treated as empirical realities rather than a series of shifting, overlapping, and historically constructed concepts. This volume is the first to provide a synthetic account of these concepts and the historical and intellectual contexts in which they emerged. Bringing together prominent international scholars from across multiple disciplines, it systematically and comprehensively explores how such “meso-regions” have been conceptualized throughout modern European history.
Additional text
“All in all, this volume is a successful and highly recommendable book. It conveys many important insights into European history, as well as into the possibilities of doing a conceptual history which goes beyond basic political-philosophical concepts. And it will provide the reader with a good knowledge-base for answering the question about where Central Europe actually is located.” • Global Intellectual History
“Many of the individual chapters are highly readable and insightful…Many [readers] will indulge in the rich intricacies of conceptual history and historical concepts that abound in this book as a whole.” • European History Quarterly
“With a roster of authoritative scholars, the chapters of this book chart the construction and use of the key concepts of European space. By focusing on conceptual ‘clusters’, an extraordinary number of subjects are covered, and the complex processes at work are further highlighted by the frequent cross-referencing between chapters and topics, making this compelling book much more than the sum of its individual studies.” • Wendy Bracewell, University College London
